Luis

Aug. 18

Written By Darius Bashar

This is Luis. He owns an award winning tattoo shop in Toronto called Puedmag Inkpire.

I ran into him seconds after getting out of my car.

Luis had a power and presence to his energy that immediately caught my attention. I felt a bit intimidated.

His incredible tattoos also caught my eye.

I am realizing through this project how much I love photographing humans and their tattoos.

People who have tattoos all over the bodies feel like walking art canvases to me.

Here’s a fun fact about Luis: before his career as a tattoo artist he worked on a cow farm and had several pet pigs.

How do I know this? I followed him on IG and watched a really cool reel where they ask the tattoo artists at his shop what they did before tattoos. Many of the answers in that IG reel surprised me.

And if I’m honest, it humanized tattoo artists in a deeper way for me. I was able to see myself in many of their answers and I realized that—despite looking very different on the surface—we actually have a lot in common.

Big love,

PS: If you want to see the behind the scenes video of me approaching Luis and taking these photos, check out my Instagram or my TikTok.